The Cybersecurity Tech Accord: Time to Come Together to Combat Digital Threats

At Trend Micro we’re committed to making the world a safer place in which to exchange digital information. In fact, we’ve been protecting our customers from the ever-evolving threat landscape for nearly 30 years. But we know we can and must do more as an industry to combat the challenges we face today. That’s why we’re a founding member of a monumental new pact with some of the world’s biggest security and technology companies.

The Cybersecurity Tech Accord demonstrates a commitment by key industry players like us to become more than the sum of our parts. By working together we can make an even bigger impact in helping protect global consumers and organizations from cybercrime and nation-state hacking.

The $8 trillion problem

Turn on the TV, open a newspaper or browse the web and you’ll read the same thing: cyberattacks are everywhere today. Trend Micro alone blocked over 66.4 billion online threats last year, more than 631 million of which were ransomware-related. Then there’s crypto-jacking, info-stealing malware, phishing, zero-day exploits — the list of threats facing internet users today is immense, and it will only continue to grow and evolve.

What does this mean for organizations? The risk of huge financial and reputational damage: legal costs, regulatory fines, customer attrition, and much more. We predict that cumulative losses from Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks alone will hit $9 billion this year. In fact, the cybercrime industry is predicted to cost the global economy as much as $8 trillion by 2022.

Four steps to a more secure world

That’s why key industry players have come together to form the Cybersecurity Tech Accord: the largest-ever joint commitment by private sector technology and security companies to protect customers and improve cybersecurity. It’s built around four key tenets:

Stronger defense: We will help protect users and organizations around the world, wherever they are.

No offensive support: We will not help governments to launch cyberattacks or undermine the security of our products by tampering with them. Incidents such as the WannaCry ransomware attacks of 2017, which leveraged alleged nation-state-developed exploits, have shown how easily government-level offensive capabilities can lead to mass attacks on innocent businesses and consumers.

Capacity building: We’ll all do more to help developers and those who use their technology improve their ability to protect themselves — via new features and best practices.

Collective action: All members of the accord will work together via formal and informal partnerships with other industry players, civil society, researchers and more to share intelligence, manage vulnerability disclosures and combat malware.

Trend Micro’s pledge

As a founding member of the accord, Trend Micro is keenly aware of the positive power of industry-wide collaboration. The 28 companies currently on board include companies like Cisco, Facebook, HP, Intel, Microsoft, Nokia, Oracle, Siemens, and Trend Micro, and together represent a market capitalization of more than $1.8 trillion. Each will be able to contribute different expertise to benefit the whole.

Part of the value Trend Micro will bring is in leveraging our world-leading vulnerability detection and threat intelligence capabilities in known, new and forward-looking threats. We’ll play an active role in coordinating vulnerability disclosures across the group, collaborating via shared intelligence and enabling other members to identity vulnerabilities in their own systems earlier on.

No one of us alone can solve the problems that cybercrime and nation-state hacking have brought to the world. But together we have a chance — through partnerships, collective action and determination. It’s time to make technology work for us, not the bad guys.